What am I, Invisible?
by The Nightly Ninja
Summary: Percy wakes up one morning with a duplicate on his bed. oh. And he's invisible: the only way someone can see him is if they know that he's there, and since no one knows that he's gone, the odds of him finding someone to see and hear him are slim. fortunately, there IS one being that can see him. T for language and use of alcohol and tobacco.
1. Chapter 1

Percy Jackson woke up on the 4th of July, sprawled across the floor of cabin 4, with a doppelganger laying in his bed. While Percy never woke up quickly, he was on his feet in seconds, carefully observing the stranger. Well, not a stranger: it was him just… not… _him_. The son of Poseidon took a few deep breaths to calm himself. Despite the fact that he didn't succeed, something did calm him down: a sweet laugh that rang out just beyond his cabin door.

"Annabeth…" he mumbled with a smile, feeling his racing pulse instantly start to level out. If _anyone_ could understand what was happening, it was Annabeth.

She opened the door and released another sweet laugh, this time saying the words that made the blissful smile melt into a look of horror; "Still asleep? Oh come on you seaweed brain, GET UP!" she moved right past Percy, pouncing on top of the duplicate, who moaned and mumbled one of Percy's unintelligible early morning complaints into the drool splattered pillow. Annabeth laughed again, starting to walk out again as Percy number 2 started to get up.

The original was frustrated now, grabbing at her foot as she left shouting, "What am I, **_INVISIBLE_**?" though when Annabeth turned around to look at him, it seemed that he _was_ invisible; she looked right through him at the floor, even mumbling "A loose floorboard…?"

Percy's breathing hitched again as he stood up in front of her, almost whimpering, "Annabeth, can you see me? Annabeth, can you hear me? Please… _Please_ … _ANNABETH_ _PLEASE!"_ when she gave no response, he trudged out of the cabin, to try to find someone who could see him.

At Cabin 1, he woke up Jason and Thalia, both of whom scowled in his direction before launching complaints at each other about waking the other.

He then went to the hades cabin, where Nico started cussing at the air like a sailor and hazel was distracted from his presence by Nico's profanities (she looked like she would have a heart-attack).

Percy went to Rachel's cave, to find the young oracle painting a shadowy figure in a black coat with a hood obscuring his face. When he tried to get her attention, she looked around calmly before returning to her painting.

On his way to the big house to try to get Chiron, he saw something that made him sick; his _girlfriend_ playing _their_ games with the _faker_. Annabeth really couldn't tell that there was something wrong.

Then again, Percy himself couldn't tell what was wrong with him either; the guy was a perfect replica of him, down to the specific way that he tripped on a certain patch of grass whenever they walked by it.

Sickened by the idea that the copy was so good, he continued on to the big house, where he found Grover and Chiron in the office, and Piper talking to Leo in the kitchen. Percy did everything he could to get their attention, but only Grover actually seemed to believe that there was someone else there, probably by his smell, though Chiron convinced him that there was no one else there. Leo had a minor panic attack and lit himself on fire while Piper yelled in charmspeak "show yourself!"

Having lost all hope, Percy started toward the exit of camp half-blood, asking if random people could see him as he went. Only when he stepped over the boundary did someone acknowledge him.

And Percy had a hunch that this man wasn't quite human.


	2. Chapter 2

Percy spent about 3 seconds looking at the man in front of him before his black military uniform liquefied and swirled around him until the man was nothing more than a ragged black cloak with two glowing red orbs peaking out of the shadows of the hood, levitating a few inches off of the ground, the scarlet eyes never once leaving him.

"Is there a problem young man?" a kind voice coming from the hood asked him.

"Uh, yeah." Percy said bluntly.

"Oh yes? And what would that be?"

After getting over his initial shock and joy that someone could see him, Percy looked around as if to see if this was a joke. "well, it could be the fact that there's another me walking around in my home, kissing my girlfriend and hanging out with my friends. Or the fact that I'm talking to a floating clothing accessory. Or the fact that **I'M INVISIBLE AND NO ONE CAN SEE OR HEAR ME!** "

As Percy hyperventilated in his panic, the cloak chuckled and corrected calmly, "No one knows you're there."

"…What…?"

"The _reason_ no one can see you or hear you is because they don't know that you're there. Don't know who you are. they can feel you, and smell you; you're still _there,_ but they have no idea. that clone makes it so that your disappearance goes completely unnoticed, so that people don't know it's not you, so that they can't see you so that they go on that way. If they knew you and knew that you were there, they would see you normally."

Percy scowled at the enigma before him, eventually asking, "who are you?"

"I am Chaos."

Percy blinked, suddenly wide-eyed. "L-like the… Like the P-pri-primor… dial… Ch-ch-chaos…?" he asked weakly, his voice a bit higher that normal.

Another chuckle, "THE primordial."

Percy nodded a few times before fainting.

* * *

The invisible son of Poseidon woke up in a strange bed in a strange room. The floor was actually a large, carpeted catwalk that was suspended along the walls of the room, just above a large darkened tank of water, which seemed to contain some sort of white sea monster. Above the catwalk, in the high, dark rafters of the bedroom, Percy could make out the faint silhouette of a black, medium sized dragon. The illuminated railings, the lamps, the panel on the bottom of the mattress and the panels that blocked the space between the railing and the catwalk generated the only light in the room, all of which were only faint. Those, and the sea-monster that was suddenly bioluminescent. The only furniture on the catwalk was a large black loft bed covered in grey sheets, with a white couch underneath and a grey desk pressed against the wall beneath the headboard. There were dark grey drawers and shelves built into the walls black around the bed.

There was also a door on the other side of the room.

Upon seeing this door, Percy took a deep breath and climbed off of the sofa where he was laid, onto the soft, plush grey carpet that practically swallowed his feet (and for some reason glowed white wherever he stepped, fading away the moment he moved his foot). Keeping his eye on the dragon and feeling the water to watch the sea-monster, Percy started to move to the door and somehow; he got out with out any trouble.

The trouble was outside of the room: Floating cloaks. Dozens of floating cloaks, milling about, opening and closing the doors that were crowded against each other in a long hallway that seemed unending to the young newbie. Even the large room he had just left had a small door that was crowded against others. (It's _bigger on the inside…._ Percy thought in a kind of terrified awe)

"Ch….. Chaos….?" He whimpered, feeling like an abandoned puppy as he longed for the kind primordial to return.


	3. Chapter 3

As the cloaks crashed into him, Percy whimpered, occasionally calling out for Chaos as a pathetic feeling washed over him: he was the savior of Olympus and all he could do was rely on a stranger that seemed equally good and bad. He was returning to the room when he completely wiped out one of the cloaks, this one actually saying something to him; "is someone there? Uh… punch me in the face if there's someone there…" Percy hesitated a moment, but complied when the clothing started to drift away. "OW!" he shouted, "that fucking HURT…. You can throw a punch, noob… jeez, I should've thought that through…." He mumbled, shaking his hood a bit. "Okay, uh…. Grab at the hem of my cloak and come on; I'll get you a cloak so we can actually talk and… I don't know; stuff…." Percy complied with a scowl; the voice was so, _SO_ familiar, but he couldn't place quite where he had heard it…

As he was lead through the maze like halls of some sort of palace, percy started to wonder just how he knew this guy, eventually remembering that this guy was a demigod from camp half-blood. Another three hallways later percy recalled that the voice was a son of hermes, and seven halls after that, percy remembered a specific name; it was Luke.

 **Luke Castellan.** As in, the Luke Castellan that started a war and tried to kill him and his friends countless times. Though before he could make a mistake and let go of the cloak, Percy caught a glimpse of Luke's face. Luke's _scarless_ face. Meaning that the real Luke was replaced before his quest; meaning that the duplicate was the one that did all of the horrible things in and before The Titan War; meaning that Annabeth had been right from the beginning. Luke wasn't a bad guy.

Accepting that this Luke, who actually seemed very nice, had nothing to do with The Titan War, Percy kept his hand on Lukes cloak, following until they reached a locked door that Luke opened with his powers from Hermes. "all right c'mon." he murmured as he walked in and turned on the lights. "here and…. Here…. And… there's that, this, and this thing-y." He said, passing percy a crisp black cloak, a map of the castle and very heavy bundles of textbooks, weapons and clothes that seemed to come together for some sort of uniform. "what I don't get," Luke started as percy put on the cloak, "is why Chaos isn't doing this; he's normally there with you noobs when you first get here, he gives you the stuff and shows you around and all that… whatever it was, it must've been important… he would never ditch on a new guy if he could help it..."

"Wait so, this _is_ Chaos' place… right?"

"yeah." Luke laughed, seeming happy that he could finally hear the stranger.

before he could continue, he was cut off by percy who bluntly said, "you're Luke Castellan." A simple statement that seemed to shock Luke down to his core.

"how did you…?"

"your voice. I'm pretty sure I only met your duplicate, but he welcomed me to the hermes cabin on my first day of camp. We also had some… less friendly encounters after that…."

Luke smiled, "give me a hint, I hung around camp for a few months and the start of the summer after I was replaced, I might know you!"

"I'm a really special demigod man: one of a kind." percy laughed.

The instant percy said the words luke grinned, "son of the big three…?"

"Poseidon."

Lukes smile was unbelievably wide now, "oh! Oh! Per—Whoa! Percy! Dude you grew up _A LOT_. Bet the girls are all over you these days, huh brojangles!?"

Percy laughed, "Actually I'm dating Annabeth, so-" Percy was suddenly knocked into a corner with Luke glaring down at him menacingly.


	4. Chapter 4

What is considered one of your weaknesses?"

"Uh loyalty is my fatal flaw… if that's what you mean?" Percy whimpered uncertainly, sliding lower down the wall that Luke had pinned him to, terrified of Luke's sudden change in demeanor.

"What do you do when you are not working?"

"H-hang out at the beach? Hang out with Annabeth? Wh-why are—"

"What do you like about Annabeth?"

"W-well, she's really smart, and s-strong, very brave, and she's one of the most beautiful—"

"Before meeting her, how long were you single?"

"Ann-Annabeth was my f-first girlfriend…"

"How did you meet her?"

"She was my b- _Best_! Best friend for five years…!" in the back of his mind, Percy subconsciously groaned at his sudden voice crack, but he was too terrified of Luke to _actually_ groan.

"How long have you been dating?"

"Ab-about a-a-a year."

"What is the craziest, wildest thing you have ever done?"

"Uh, I, I jumped into Tartarus."

Luke was suddenly twice as terrifying as he stated, "I don't like liars."

"N-no, no! I'm not! Swear on the Styx, I'm not! You see, Annabeth was sent on a big solo quest by her mother; to fight Arachne." Now Luke had backed off, bug-eyed while practically begging Percy to continue as he was released from the corner, "She actually won: She tricked Arachne into taking out the whole cavern, but _under_ the cavern was a pit. Strait to Tartarus, and as she fell, Archne caught Annabeth's ankle with a web, pulling her down." Luke was on the ground, clutching the front of Percy's shirt and staring at him, eyes beginning to brim with tears, "I-I-I caught her wrist," Percy continued frantically, realizing why Luke was acting the way he was, "but, we were both dangling over Tartarus; I couldn't pull us both back up, and I couldn't get her out herself, so instead, I just let go of the ledge. We landed in the river Cocytus and Escaped through the Doors of Death."

"yeah." Luke smiled, still rather teary eyed, "yeah, you're good enough for my little sister…"

After that scarring experience was over, Luke gave Percy a full tour, eventually ending it at the very room Percy had left hardly two hours ago. "there's a dragon in there though!" Percy yelped when Luke suggested they go inside.

"OH! Perce; THAT'S _GOOD!_ No, screw 'good', _THAT'S_ _ **GREAT**_ _!"_ Luke laughed after Percy responded, "that means, Chaos sees potential for you to be a high ranking officer; I had a dragon in my room too. Trust me, it won't attack anyone you want in your room, including yourself."

"Really?" Percy asked, skeptical, "how do you expect me to believe you?"

Apparently, Luke decided that bringing Percy to his own room would be proof enough. The room was fairly similar, though instead of a Giant fish tank under the catwalk, Luke had a small, one to two man training arena. Lo and behold: there was a stony grey dragon, battle worn and clinging to one of the rafters, watching Percy with glowing yellow eyes, apparently to gauge whether Luke wanted him around or not. "So, uh, what rank are you in?" Percy asked eyes locked on the dragons, "How _does_ the ranking work here?"

Luke explained that it was similar to the Greek military, though it was all up to chaos and not the citizens. When he finished with his explanation, Luke laughed confidently, " _heh_. I… am a battalion leader."

Percy nodded, thinking through the heaps of useless facts Annabeth had spouted to him, searching for the military hierarchy of Greece. At camp half blood they didn't use it anymore, so it was useless in the modern times and most demigods didn't even know the old ranking system. Still, it was useful to Percy now: "so you're a Tagmatarkhis…. And I would be a Hoplite…"

"Spot on, bromigo." Luke laughed, taking Percy back to his own room. Despite the fact that it was only across the hall, they could hardly get across due to the overwhelming amount of people milling about. They even got lost; three times. _Walking in a straight line._

At some point in their great and historical odyssey, Percy ran into someone. Literally ran into her; he saw luke being dragged away and tried to catch up, but only managed 8 inches before barreling into the poor young woman, who crumpled to the floor on contact.

"s-sorry!" he said in a kind of panicked yelp, "are you alright?!"

"Fine! Fine!" she laughed in yet another familiar voice, "my little brother used to barrel into me while playing that silly game of his all the time. Mythomagic." It was a sweet, kind voice that rang with positivity. Which was stunning when percy realized who it was: Bianca Di Angelo. The older sister of camp half bloods resident pessimist, who himself gave a vibe of hatred and death. She smelled like strawberries; her brother smelled like he had been dug out of a grave moments before entering the room. Moments later he could see the olive skin of the Italian girl before him, and the ridiculously long, sleek black hair.

"Bianca." He mumbled, and she jerked away from him, looking at him suspiciously.

"how did you know that." She whispered to percy as luke returned from wherever he had been dragged to.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

 **funny thing: this morning I was grumbling because my favorite fanfic's very punctual writer hadn't updated since last night. I just realized that I haven't updated in 2 weeks (give or take).**


	5. Chapter 5

"I'm Percy Jackson, did, uh… did you get swapped before you met me?" Percy responded to the older sister of Nico Di Angelo, while Luke stood by, rocking one of Percy's most confused expressions.

Her shoulders instantly relaxed and she pulled out of the defensive pose she had taken, "Yeah, I guess I was, but I did see you in the Lotus Casi…. WOAH. Someone did some puberty-ing. Then again, you were 12." Percy smiled at her and introduced her to Luke, who knew her well from his own short time in the Lotus, years before he met Thailia. After they finished with introductions, the trio continued their conquest across the hall, eventually converging in Percy's room to talk and goof around in the short time left before dinner. Nico was a big subject: Percy having to tell Bianca that her cheerful little brother had become the most terrifyingly gloomy person in camp half-blood, and that he had been in Tartarus alone. The mortified look on her face made him want to scream. After that she told them how he used to be, as well as embarrassing stories from Nico's childhood.

Another subject was Annabeth ("that pretty blond who undoubtedly ended up being unbelievably hot?" as Bianca referred to her). Percy got to tell both of them about he and Annabeth's quests, and apparently, the way he accidentally told it, it ended up being—not just a kick-ass action story-but also a love story. The kind that you couldn't help but "aww" at. (Bianca even screamed "PERCABETH!" when he got to the reunion, so loud he fell off of the couch.)

Chaos was something else; Bianca and Luke told Percy all about their great leader, so kind and thoughtful and generous. The leader of the army Percy had apparently become a part of.

"I don't get it though," Percy said, "if chaos sees _so much potential_ for me to be _so important_ to his army; _why is he not here_?"

"Chaos is a pretty busy guy Perce: I'm sure he wanted to come, but something might have come up."

Before Percy could argue with her, Luke made a good point, "for all you know, he could've come to get you while you were gone. That's what happened to me. Except, while you've got us; I HAD **NO ONE**. I literally sat in a corner and cried until he found me." Percy blinked blankly at the new idea that Luke had been and could ever be so helpless. Still, when that shock passed Percy sighed, knowing that they could be right; the guy seemed caring enough.

In that instant a familiar, kind voice rang from the entryway, now illuminated by the stark white hallway, "I've been looking for you." They _were_ right.

Percy sheepishly turned his head up to the primordial, "you haaaave?" he asked in a voice strained by embarrassment. Though chaos merely chuckled.

"Never mind that m'boy. Come, I need to speak with you." So Percy did follow him, Bianca and Luke leaving his room in favor of their own as he did. He followed Chaos through twisting pathways and narrow spiral stairwells, and At some point, Percy found that they were standing in front of a set of enormous ebony doors, faint red marks in very small script appeared and disappeared every few moments as they drifted in a thin veil above the doors. As Percy walked inside, he found a small office room with a brick fireplace casting the only light in the room.

"Come in." Chaos chuckled as though Percy, still standing in the doorway, was a small child that had done something funny. As Percy wandered aimlessly and uncharacteristically shyly into the room, he found that the towering walls were lined with spoils of war; giant heads, weapons, antlers and, shaking violently in their glass case behind chaos, a massive pair of black wings.

"Perseus." Chaos said firmly, Percy biting his bottom lip in embarrassment as he finally took his seat in front of the desk. "There we go. Now that we're getting some traction, I'll jump into it; I want you to join my army. You get..." chaos was now the one losing himself when Percy nodded before hearing the perks. "You don't care about what you get out of this?" Percy shook his head. "Well… that's odd but, alright. Now that you have agreed to join my army, I'm going to just tell this to you now: I need to take a minor power to give you the powers of my soldiers. Any power I don't care." He added at the end looking at the eager wings while Percy thought.

"staying dry." Percy said eventually and Chaos woke up.

"w-what?"

"uh, the taking power thing? You can take my ability to stay dry?"

"I said 'any power' didn't I?" Percy thought that that was a 'yes' until chaos leaned across the table and smacked him upside the head.

"OW." Percy said loudly as he rubbed his cheek, "you could've just said that it wouldn't do!"

Chaos looked up from his paperwork, "what do you mean?"

"You just smacked me!"

"Oh no, that was me TAKING the power." Then chaos splashed him with a glass of water on his desk. "Now go to dinner."

And that's how Percy Jackson spent half an hour, somehow drenched with a pools worth of water, trudging around chaos' palace before the primordial found him and took him to the dining hall, mumbling "I'm just messing up everything with you, aren't I?"


	6. Chapter 6

In the massive dining hall, Percy sat at the big table in the front with Chaos, not particularly enjoying the rapt attention he was given for the eternity it took to ramble off his various titles, name (instead of Percy, Chaos called him Nod, which was apparently his name for missions now?) and to explain why he was there. After that nightmare was over, people (or rather, glowing hoods) continued to stare. And, even if they couldn't _actually_ see him, Percy hated every second of it until chaos stood again. "WE ARE CAST OUTS!" he roared into the crowd taking Percy alone by surprise. "MY SISTER HAS THROWN US ALL AWAY; TAKEN OUR PLACE!" everyone stood suddenly, Percy following their example as they did so. "BUT WE'VE MADE A NEW PLACE! WE'VE ADAPTED! WE'VE LEARNED! AND WE **WILL** DEFEAT THAT WITCH! AS A FAMILY!"

"AS A FAMILY!" everyone, even Percy, echoed instantly. Because it felt _right_. Because Chaos and these _strangers_ had somehow become family to Percy in the few hours he'd known them. Percy smiled, feeling warm and fuzzy with sentiment as he returned to his room, smiling at the dragon who looked curiously back, not seeming to understand his sudden hospitality. The sea monster asked eventually and Percy explained the strange feeling; she laughed and bid him good-night, conveying that the dragon wished him sweet dreams as she dimmed the room to darkness.

As an Annabeth-less Tartarus began to plague his mind, He politely asked her to keep glowing; dimly.

To his relief, she complied.

* * *

"So what did he mean last night?"

"huh?" Luke had been too busy inhaling his breakfast to listen to Percy at all, though the son of Poseidon could only be so mad: he too was gorging himself on the syrup drowned blue waffles that had appeared in front of the two friends.

Bianca rolled her eyes, "He was asking about Chaos' speech last night, genius." She turned her attention back to Percy, "something serious must be going down if Chaos couldn't even explain Order to you: She's the one who replaces us. It's strategic; how she swaps people, who she swaps, the timing for when they go bad; all of it. She wants the universe to come down, but she's careful. Organized. _ORDERLY_. Chaos knows her reasons and decides who he recruits based on who she replaces."

"Okay but… what do you mean 'when they go bad'?"

"Well lets take a look at my copy-cat," Luke suddenly interjected, "did he seem nice? Did he start nice?" Percy nodded, "well how did he end up?"

"Evil?" Percy said after hesitating slightly.

"You say it like he wasn't. He tried to overthrow Olympus _with my face_! With this _BEAUTIFUL_ face."

Percy laughed at the face that his friend was smushing up, his hands pressed into his cheeks. "I'm not saying he wasn't evil, no he _definitely_ was, it's just… in the end he was a good guy." He ended sincerely.

"Mhm, what was happening?" Bianca asked through a mouthful of waffle. When Percy told her about the fight on Olympus, Luke grabbed fistfuls of the tablecloth and Bianca nodded. "In certain situations, they jump back to the original programming, start thinking like us again. He probably did something Luke would do; what was it?"

"He stabbed himself in his Achilles heel to stop Kronos."

"Yeah. How about mine?"

"she wasn't really that bad to begin with but… I guess she was going; she left Nico for the hunters of Artemis," shadows whipped and curled around the girl in her fury. "and set a giant killer robot on us…"

"That Bit-"

"Then she took my place, dying. And she got Nico a mythomagic figurine."

"There you go." She still didn't seem too happy about the leaving-Nico thing, but she was calming down, her shadows thinning out until they where gone.

After breakfast, they took Percy to go through what was apparently his new daily schedule. Before leaving him to his own devices for the afternoon, Luke attended to his Battalion, introducing Percy as Nod and allowing him to watch a couple exercises until Bianca dragged him off to introduce him to few other people he could have known (none of them. He'd heard of all of them but never _met_ them.)

When he was alone, he properly greeted the dragon (who actually seemed rather nice.) and went swimming in the strangely deep tank with the strangely motherly sea monster. But when he ran out of things to do, Percy got too bored to just sit in the room; instead, his feet carried him out of his room and into another.

This one housed dragons; lots of dragons in some kind of stable, though before he was attacked, Percy's dragon appeared and _protected_ him. Fire and razor-like claws glanced off of his pitch scales, which stood between the offending dragons and Percy who stood stock-still. In his shock of the turn of events, Percy didn't notice the stinging pain across his forehead from a projectile scale fragment as the dragon sent the others running.

"You idiot…" it seemed to grumbled before it noticed the deep gash on Percy's forehead. It jumped like a surprised cat, squawking something that sounded like, " _DAMMIT YOU IDIOT!_ " and rushing towards him with wide eyes as Percy blacked out, blood spilling into his eyes and down his face.


End file.
